Maria De Lourdes Pahl was last seen walking out of her Vinton home Aug. 1, 1980, after an argument with her husband.

El Paso County sheriff's Detective Irene Anchondo said none of Pahl's children or other relatives have seen or heard from her since, which is why she is classified as missing by law enforcement and her case remains open.

"Nationwide, there are as many as 100,000 active missing persons at a given time," said J. Todd Matthews, spokesman for the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUS). "Some have described missing persons as the nation's 'silent mass disaster.'"

In El Paso there are 35 such cases. Pahl is one of them.

Anchondo, a Crimes Against Persons investigator, said she started working on the 32-year-old missing person case after Pahl's children called the Sheriff's Office for an update.

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"Like we've seen in other missing persons cases, her six children are heart-broken over her disappearance," Anchondo said. "I've never seen a case as cold as this one. We haven't had one new lead that can help find out what happened, and we're hoping that someone in the public who knows something will come forward with the information."

According to the case file, Anchondo said most of the couple's arguments were over her proselytizing activities with a Jehovah's Witness group, including a fight on the day she disappeared.

REPORTER

Diana Washington Valdez

About 10 years ago, investigators excavated the woman's yard in Vinton on Holguin Road, and used cadaver dogs to search the home area. They found nothing.

Anchondo said Pahl had a sister in Vinton and other relatives in Juárez, but none of those relatives reported seeing her again.

"She was known to frequent the Mambo Club on Doniphan Drive, but that place no longer exists," Anchondo said. "We don't know if she accepted a ride from someone, or whether she took a bus to get someplace. She didn't know how to drive."

Stacey Pahl Valle, Pahl's daughter, who lives in another state now, said she and her siblings have not given up on finding their mother.

"I was 11 months old. I have absolutely no memory of my mom, I wondered if I smelled a perfume on any woman growing up, if I would recognize it, or her voice," she said. "From everyone who knew my mom, from my father's side to hers, they all agreed on how she loved and valued family. I see the pictures of her -- and although she's not smiling for the camera, she is smiling at her babies," the daughter said. "That is why it's quite difficult for her to just have upped and left. I'm not saying that wasn't possible, but there's been no trace after so many years."

Anchondo said, "We know that some (people) decide to just walk away from their lives and leave everything behind. But, based on what we know about (Pahl), it's unlikely that she would not have contacted her family after all this time."

Virginia Lazalde, left, and other family members seek closure in the disappearance of Lorenzo Vazquez. (Ruben R. Ramirez / El Paso Times)

"I want to find my mom to get to know her," Valle said. "If she's not well, be there for her; if she's alive and well, while time allows us, to start a relationship; and if she's deceased, give her a proper resting place.

"My nieces, her grand-daughters constantly ask me what news I have. We are looking for answers. I may not remember her voice, scent, embraces, but my heart can't help but love my mom."

Pahl, who was 35 years old when she disappeared, is 5 feet tall, weighed 138 pounds, has a dimpled chin, black hair and brown eyes. She was wearing a green top and blue jeans.

Anchondo is asking anyone with information to contact her at the El Paso County Sheriff's Office, 915-996-3375.

Sheriff's Detective Irene Anchondo looks through the file of a missing person case from the 1980s in her office Wednesday. (Mark Lambie/El Paso Times)

In an effort to help law enforcement officials solve missing persons cases, NamUs operates the first national clearinghouse for missing persons that is accessible to the public and law enforcement. Created in 2009, NamUs, which helps solve missing person's cases, also provides top forensics experts and other resources to help investigators.

It is housed at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth, and is funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the research and development arm of the U.S. Department of Justice.

The unidentified

According to NamUs and the Texas Department of Public Safety, which also maintains a database of missing persons, 614 people are missing in Texas under unexplained or suspicious circumstances. About 35 of them are missing in El Paso.

The lists are not exhaustive because participation in NamUs and other clearinghouses is voluntary. All the missing persons cases that could be in NamUs are not there yet, Matthews said.

Investigators said the missing come from all walks of life and backgrounds. Some may be victims of foul play, others likely were abducted by relatives, and still others simply could have walked away from their lives voluntarily. Some likely are dead and their bodies are in a morgue somewhere waiting to be identified or claimed.

Matthews said that nationwide the remains of as mnay as 40,000 people may remain unidentified.

"And, nationwide," he said, "another 4,400 unidentified remains are found every year and over 1,000 of these remain unidentified after one year."

NamUs, in addition to information about missing persons, contains information on the unidentified remains of people held in morgues, as well as the remains of people who have not been claimed by next of kin.

As of Friday, Texas had 1,076 such cases pending. Twenty-five cases have been solved since NamUs began in 2009. As of Friday, at least 21 unidentified persons in NamUs cases are connected to El Paso.

Among the unidentified persons reported by El Paso's morgue are the skeletal remains of a Hispanic woman who was found in 1994. She has brown hair, is 5 feet tall and weighs 112 pounds.

Another El Paso case involves a man whose body was found in 1993 in an alley by a dumpster. He has a tattoo of the letter "E" or "W" on the right arm, had dirty blond hair and was balding. He wore a gray Levi polo shirt, Levi blue jeans, white socks and white tennis shoes. He had 25 cents in his pocket.

According to NamUs, Texas has two men who were identified but have not been claimed by relatives. Neither are El Paso cases. New Mexico has not entered any identified by unclaimed persons in the database.

Solving cases

Historically, missing person's cases, especially old ones, have been difficult to solve, and that's why NamUs was created, Matthews said. However, a new emphasis on coordination and collaboration led to the resolution of 4,309 cases nationally, including 209 in Texas.

Matthews, who also works with the Doe Network, an international clearing house for missing persons, said the need for a U.S. central clearinghouse for missing persons became evident over the years. El Paso's detective said they are familiar with NamUs, and are using its resources.

"Although NCIC (the National Crime Information Center) was helpful, we did not have one institution or center that was dedicated specifically to missing persons cases," Matthews said. "We had a situation that required thinking outside of our counties and state borders. Data was not being shared effectively."

According to NamUs, finding missing adults is difficult, in part because few states have laws that actually require law enforcement to prepare missing person reports of adults.

Geography and different jurisdictions present different challenges. For example, the body of a missing person who died could be in a morgue of another county or state, but without the ability to cross-check across jurisdictions, an investigator might never make the connection.

NamUs also allows the public, including relatives of the missing and advocates, to submit information about missing people. After these submissions are checked out with law enforcement, the information is uploaded on the NamUs website, along with any available photos or sketches of the missing person.

Relatives, as well as law enforcement, can arrange to provide DNA samples free of charge that authorities can use to match to missing persons.

Detective Anchondo said this aspect of NamUs helps to give relatives of missing persons some control in their search for missing loved ones.

In cooperation with Mexican consular officials, Matthews said NamUs resources also are being used to identify migrants from Mexico who died in the border area in states like Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

"The deaths of migrants along the border are a big problem," Matthews said.

According to the Arizona Human Remains Recovery Project, an advocacy organization, the remains of 2,446 men, women and children were found at the Arizona-Sonora border between fiscal years 2001 and 2012.

Mexico does not have a national database similar to NamUs to match missing persons with recovered remains. Also, some of the human remains found along the border could be of people from Central and South American countries.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), probably the best known program focused on missing children, has partnered with NamUs.

NCMEC, a private, nonprofit organization created in 1984, maintains a database of missing children and serves as a national resource on missing and sexually exploited children. Several missing persons cases of youths from El Paso and Southern New Mexico, some dating to 1987, are in its database.

Advocates say that over the years, new laws had to be passed to bring about the kind of changes that are leading to rescues and resolutions.

"In 1984, police could enter information about stolen cars, stolen guns, and even stolen horses into the FBI's national crime computer -- but not stolen children. That is no longer the case," according to NCMEC's website.

Bob Lowery, NCMEC's executive director for the missing children division in Washington, D.C., said new tools are helping locate more missing children than before.

"When we started out in 1984, we had a success rate for finding children of 62 percent. Today, it's 98 percent," Lowery said. "We are finding more children today than ever in the history of the United States.

"Public awareness is greater, we have cell phones, we can communicate with the public in real time, and we have the Internet, better DNA technology and the Amber Alert system. As we develop social media tools, we will be able to reach masses of people that we couldn't before."

Lowery said NamUs has not reached its full potential, but when it does it will offer a formidable tool for locating people of all ages who are missing, especially the older cases.

"For example, we had a case that was more than 20 years old, and it turned out the victim was (found) dead, but in another place other than where the person was reporting missing," Lowery said. "It was not until a connection was made using DNA and biometrics that the family was able to get answers. We don't say that families find closure. What we try to give them are answers."

Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at dvaldez@elpasotimes.com; 546-6130.

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